I sent an e mail on the Sabbath; I cast my bread upon the waters. The quote continues “for you will find it after many days”. This makes no investment sense. Chucking a perfectly good crust away and getting a soggy, mouldy, inedible mess back is akin to investing with Neil Woodford. But I digress.
A sensible cousin sent me an e mail inviting me to send a favourite poem to a friend of hers and then to invite twenty of my friends to send one to her. I admired her initiative but I pressed the Send button before I looked. It turns out this is rather an annoying e mail chain that has irked most of my twenty chosen already, so sorry if you are one.
But I did get some poems and I did enjoy reading them. The first two were from strangers: Ozymandias and Love III, by Shelley and George Herbert. The third is new to me and perhaps you. It’s written by Matt Kelly.
I’ll tell you a tale, that’s been recently written,
Of a powerful army, so Great it saved Britain,
They didn’t have bombs and they didn’t have planes,
They fought with their hearts and they fought with their brains,
They didn’t have bullets, armed just with a mask,
We sent them to war, with one simple task,
To show us the way, to lead and inspire us,
To protect us from harm and fight off the virus,
It couldn’t be stopped by our bullet proof vests,
An invisible enemy, invaded our chests,
So we called on our weapon, our soldiers in Blue,
“All Doctors, All Nurses, Your Country needs you”
We clapped on our streets, hearts bursting with pride,
As they went off to war, while we stayed inside,
They struggled at first, as they searched for supplies,
But they stared down the virus, in the whites of its eyes,
They leaped
from the trenches and didn’t think twice,
Some never came back, the ultimate price,
So tired, so weary, yet still they fought on,
As the virus was beaten and the battle was won,
The many of us, owe so much, to so few,
The brave and the bold, our heroes in Blue,
So let’s line the streets and remember our debt
We love you, our heroes,
Lest we forget.
Clare Balding, thank you for sharing and Pam Connor thank you for suggesting this music.
As another link in your chain I want to share some words by my dear friend Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. It is a hymn text (opposed to a poem, strictly speaking), but perfectly relates to current times. I was tempted not to share it with you until the end of Holy Week, but felt others may wish to employ it on Easter eve. The words are intended to be paired with the hymn tune AURELIA should you wish to intone.
This Easter celebration is not like ones we’ve known.
We pray in isolation, we sings the hymns alone,
We’re distant from our neighbours, from worship leaders too,
No flowers grace the chancel to set a festive mood.
No gathered choirs are singing; no banners lead the way.
O God of love and promise; where’s joy this Easter day?
With sanctuaries empty, may homes become the place-
We ponder resurrection and celebrate your grace.
Our joy won’t come from worship that’s in a crowded room,
But from the news of women who saw the empty tomb.
Our joy comes from disciples who ran with haste to see
Who heard that Christ is risen, and then, by grace, believed.
In all the grief and suffering may we remember well:
Christ suffered crucifixion and faced the powers of hell.
Each Easter bears the promise: Christ rose that glorious day!
Now nothing in creation can keep your love away.
We thank you that on Easter your Church is blessed to be-
A scattered, faithful body that’s doing ministry.
In homes and in the places of help and healing too,
We live the Easter message by gladly serving you.
N.B. The topic in Ecclesiastes has nothing to do with the literal interpretation of how water effects bread, but rather how our goodness effects the world. The ‘bread’, which by metonymy is best understood as the ‘seed’ of the bread (its grain), represents our goodness, and the rest of the passage encourages us to be undeterred in our ‘sowing’. In such troubled days we must indeed ‘cast our bread’ – we must liberally extend our goodness, even when it may not appear to be doing any good, as we cannot know the result it may have.
CB,
Great to have you back in full time harness. Thank you for including me in your poem list. I had a few push backs. One of my list very politely said I was the fourth that week to ask her. The declinature that I liked best was a request to be dropped because “poetry isn’t really my thing.” I have had, like you, I wide range of poems so far, many of which I was unfamiliar with. The one I liked best so far was this:
Book of Kells
8th Century Monks footnote
Bitter and Wild
the wind tonight
Tosses the tresses
of the sea to white
On such a night
I sleep with ease.
Fierce Norsemen
Only course
quiet Seas
Aboard, aboard! What man accepts seclusion
when there’s a world ahead that ís free and fair?
Henrik Ibsen